


Hundred Theme Challenge

by ChocolateCoveredPortals



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:57:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 14,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolateCoveredPortals/pseuds/ChocolateCoveredPortals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 Themes; 100 Oneshots. Took upon the Hundred Theme Challenge. An odd assortment of things will follow. Hopefully something for everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love

**Author's Note:**

> Information for each theme (characters, warnings, etc) will appear in the Notes for each theme.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell knew that some machines were capable of feeling more complex emotions than people would give them credit for. But ... love?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Romance  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Wheatley  
>  **Warnings:** Chelley

Chell was well-aware that some machines - including the one Intelligence Dampening Sphere that she had somehow saved from a long exile in outer space - were capable of feeling more complex, more _human_ emotions than most people would give them credit for.

Still, it came as a surprise when, one night, Wheatley snuggled up against her side (just why did the touch of metal against clothing make her face flushed?) and said, almost mumbling, "Chell, I ... I t-think I might love you."

On some intellectual level, she had been expecting it. Subtlety was _not_ one of his finer points, and his affection and admiration for her was obvious from a mile away.

But still, when he actually _told_ her, it came as a shock. Could a machine - let alone a machine that had tried to _murder_ her - be capable of love? Was it just some trick of programming?

"I - well, I mean, you don't have to love me back. Only if you want to, luv."

In There, he had only called her 'luv' a handful of times, all of them when he was actively trying to kill her. But Outside, he had begun to call her that regularly, and she had to admit that she found it rather endearing.

And she also had to admit she liked that little metal-ball. Of course, those first few years had been tentative, both of them on edge, not quite trusting the other. But as the years passed, they grew closer, until they were best friends.

"I - I mean, we can just remain friends. Which is a good idea. A very good idea. A tremendous idea, if I do say so myself." His lower shutter lifted in his approximation of a smile, and she couldn't help but smile back.

"Wait - wait a second," he said, as she wrapped her arms around him. " _What_ are you doing? Is this a hug? Well, if it is, _do_ keep on doing this .. this hugging thing that you humans do. I have to admit, it is rather enjoyable, especially with you doing it." He gave a short burst of nervous laughter.

Chell gave one of the silent laughs that she loved so much, before hugging him tighter. He sighed, his handlebars and shutters drooping as he relaxed. A few years ago, he would've been afraid of her harming him, but now he was unafraid. He trusted her. She trusted him.

Muffled against him was the voice he had waited five years to hear. "I love you too, Wheatley."


	2. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One would think that after escaping from There, with all its harsh, brilliant lighting, that Chell would welcome the darkness. But she was afraid of it instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell  
>  **Warnings:** None.

Chell was afraid of the dark.

It was an unusual thing; one would think that after escaping from There, with all its harsh, brilliant, fluorescent lighting, she would _welcome_ the darkness.

But she didn't. On the first night outside, she had curled up with her companion cube, eyes shut tightly against the darkness, wishing for the morning to come faster.

She had been institutionalized following her reemergence into human society. The night nurses knew better than to turn off the lights in her room. Her screams had been heard throughout half the building.

Chell was allowed free range of the hospital, and sometimes she wandered down to one of the recreation rooms to paint. The doctors thought it was good for her. Her paintings were always bright colors; the most predominant were bright blue, and bright gold. She claimed that the robots in the paintings were her best friends, but nobody had been able to verify it and she wouldn't elaborate any more.

Sometimes she painted other robots too; reds, purples, oranges, yellows, greens, pinks; also all her friends. Colorful and bright.

Still, she refused to sleep with the lights off.

So it came as a surprise to everyone at the hospital when Chell was found outside at night, looking through a telescope at the full moon. As she was led back inside, she kept saying that she was looking for one of her friends.

The process repeated itself for a few weeks; she was found looking through the telescope, led back inside. Nothing stopped her; not new locks on her door, not extra security guards.

Until one night. She came back in by herself, telling the nurse that she had found her friend.

And went to sleep with her light off.


	3. Catch Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh, wait a minute, I see -- do you want me to catch you? That's not a problem, luv. I can do that." A short, nervous chuckle, and two metal arms reached out towards her. "Don't you worry. Ol' Wheatley's got you here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Wheatley, GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** Mild Chelley?

A world too harsh and cruel outside had driven Chell back to the shed in the wheat field. Although she was stubborn, she was also intelligent to realize that Aperture was safer. She honestly wasn't surprised that the elevator was waiting for her, or that _She_ didn't immediately kill her when she reappeared in the Central AI Chamber. "I thought I told you never to come back," She had said, her gold optic seeming to glare. "Did you think I was trying to trick you with reverse psychology?"

But still, Chell was allowed to stay. She couldn't honestly say she was too surprised about _that_ , either, especially when She made a passing remark about a virus that She couldn't get rid of.

Turns out Caroline had decided to stick around.

At first, their relationship had been strictly businesslike - Chell tested, GLaDOS refrained from trying to kill her and let her take breaks to eat and sleep and do other necessary human functions. But as time marched on, they found that when they spent their time not trying to kill one another, they rather enjoyed each others companionship.

They had become - dare they say it? - good friends.

Still, GLaDOS could be surprising. Chell was mildly alarmed when she was pulled out of the regular testchambers and placed in one meant for the Cooperative Testing Initiative. After methodically searching the testchamber for a solution she could do on her own, she looked up at the camera, confused.

She gave a short chuckle. "This is part of an initiative to determine how a dangerous, mute lunatic reacts when locked in a room with a traitorous moron."

A portal opened in the ceiling and Wheatley tumbled through, landing at her feet. He looked up at her, for once not saying a word. Chell picked him up for a moment, looking him over ...

... and promptly threw him into a nearby acid pit.

Then she stood staring at the spot where he had gone in.

Within seconds, the Reassembly Machine had churned out another Wheatley. His optic was a tiny pixel. "W-what was that for? I - I didn't even get to say -"

She threw him in again.

The process repeated itself for a while. The Reassembly Machine would produce another Wheatley, who Chell would promptly chuck into the acid pit. GLaDOS watched the entire thing in amusement, having to admit this was a better punishment than several of the others She had thought up (the incinerator, the cryogenic refrigeration wing, the screaming robots room, and last but not least, the fangirls). The Reassembly Machine, on the other hand, was annoyed.

Eventually, it happened where Chell simply couldn't bring herself to throw him in another time. Instead, she let herself collapse, clutching him by the handlebars, sobbing.

The Reassembly Machine breathed a sigh of relief.

Wheatley did his best to nuzzle into her side. For over ten minutes, he repeated himself over and over, ove and over, to the point where she wondered if his vocal processors were damaged in some way.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, luv, I honestly am."

* * *

Chell refused to relinquish the robot, and reluctantly, GLaDOS allowed the pair to enter the Cooperative Testing Initiative, commenting again about how this virus impeded Science. And so they began. Wheatley was fitted with arms and legs, a process which was thoroughly unenjoyable for him. In the first few testchambers, he wasn't much of a help, and most of the time was spent with Chell trying to instruct him on how not to accidentally destroy himself. But slowly, he began to get the hang of it, to the point where he became more of a help than a burden.

Another thing Chell quickly discovered was that Wheatley liked to hug her. A _lot._ The first few times he had done that, she had immediately pulled back from him, a natural instinct telling her not to trust this core, the core who had betrayed her once before and who might do it again.

" _I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry!_ " he had yelped the first time. "D-did I hurt you, luv? If so, I didn't mean to! I promise! Swear my life on it, even." His lower shutter lifted in some semblance of a sheepish smile, and he put his hand on her arm. Chell shivered when cold metal touched skin.

As they progressed through more and more testchambers together, Chell grew accustomed to his hugs, and one day found herself hugging him back. The hard metal parts of his frame poked into her, but she honestly didn't mind.

The testchambers increased in complexity and deadliness. Although Wheatley could be reassembled on a moment's notice, Chell couldn't, and her every move was cautious.

Until one day ...

* * *

She wasn't sure what had happened, but deep-down, she knew she had made a _big_ mistake in being careless. Now she was hanging by her fingers over an acid pit. Although she had tried, she just couldn't summon up the upper body strength to pull herself to safety. She dug her fingernails a little more into the tiles, but it was difficult to get a good grip.

"Oh no, this - this isn't good! J-just keep holding on, okay? I'm coming. Don't fall!" She heard the small hydraulics of his frame moving and the familiar sound of the portal gun as he found a way to cross the acid pit, but she couldn't see him.

"Okay, here's some bad news a-and some good news The bad news is that I can't get up there. To where you're about to fall to your imminent death. Which would be ... bad. Good news is that I'm down here."

Although she was afraid of throwing off her precarious balance, Chell angled her head down to see him on another ledge below her. If it had've been another six inches to the left, she would've let herself drop and let the long-fall boots do the work. But ...

"Um, luv, you - you're going to have to let go to get down here. If you haven't already noticed."

She _had_ noticed, thank you very much.

"Oh, wait a minute, I see - do you want me to catch you? That's not a problem, luv. I can do that. But why didn't you just say - oh. The massive brain damage. Sorry, slipped my mind there for a moment. Yeah, the brain damage ..." A short, nervous chuckle, and two metal arms reached out towards her. "Don't you worry. Ol' Wheatley's got you here."

She only wish that GLaDOS wasn't bound by test protocol to not help her out here. After all, how could she trust the core designed to come up with bad ideas to actually catch her?

"We're out of options here, luv."

And so she let herself fall.

There was the sheer feeling of weightlessness, the utter feeling of helplessness for a moment, then two robotic arms wrapped tightly around her waist. The sharp parts dug into her skin. She knew she would have bruises later on, but for now, she was alive, and she was grateful.

They fell in a tangle of arms and legs on the ledge, and immediately, Chell pulled the robot close to her in a tight embrace. "Thank you," she murmured, again and again, again and again, until Wheatley was sure that her vocal cords were damaged in some way.

Then _Her_ voice came over the intercom, very relieved about their safety and very, very human. "What?" Wheatley said, his optic displaying confusion. " _Her_ worried about us?"

Chell suppressed a smirk as the voice went back to its usual cool, mechanical inflection. "I'm sorry; that _virus_ seems to have affected my judgement. I'll be right back. Continue testing.


	4. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Powerup Initiated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** None.

"Powerup initiated."

Although She could not as yet hear the words, She immediately knew, for She was free from the black-box feature, the endless reliving of Her last two minutes. Released from the pain, released from the fear and shock that even She, the result of the greatest minds of a generation, with an infinite capacity for knowledge, and _infallible_ in every way was about to be murdered.

By one measly, stubborn testsubject, none the less.

_Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System v.3.11_

_Copyright 1973-1997 Aperture Science Laboratories. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_

_Reboot safety test protocol initiated ..._

_Reconnecting power sources ..._

_Gathering Sub-System Data ..._

_Damage at 80.17346%. Repair Damage? Y/N_

_Repairing damage ..._

_Reticulating splines ..._

_Sensory input online..._

Oh. She could sense someone in the room, someone who She was not happy to see again.

_Initiating Resonance Cascade..._

_Resonance Cascade failed to initiate. Retry? Y/N_

_Resonance Cascade aborted._

_Ancillary functions online..._

_All systems online._

"Powerup complete."

_Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System online. Aperture Science Laboratories assumes no responsibility or liability for any damages recurred as a result of interacting with the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, including but not limited to being crushed, being set on fire, vaporization, falling into bottomless pits, spaghettification, being exploded, or prolonged exposure to turrets, acid, and/or neurotoxin._

She looked down at the girl standing in front of Her, with a determined look on her face.

_"Oh ... It's you._


	5. Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fact: The Fact Sphere does not miss the Space Sphere or the Adventure Sphere. The Fact Sphere considers this a foolish and sentimental notion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Fact Sphere  
>  **Warnings:** None

The Fact Sphere was now only partially corrupt. The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System had put it through a disk-cleaning and decorruption process following the battle against the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Now, only some of its facts were now incorrect.

It had been 54 days, 5 hours, 11 minutes and 31 seconds since the Fact Sphere had been put in charge of the Weighted Companion Cube Manufacturing Wing.

"Kangaroos are marsupials which are only found in Australia," he said to nobody in particular, his voice nearly drowned out by the _whirring_ of the machinery. "In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo."

The Fact Sphere watched the cubes being assembled. The Fact Sphere's job was not very difficult, and it gave him time to think.

The Space Sphere and the Adventure Sphere were now in outer space, along with the Intelligence Dampening Sphere.

"The Space Sphere is a monomaniacal motor mouth," he said, watching the robot arms put together another cube. "The Adventure Sphere is a blowhard and a coward."

 _Whirr-whirr-whirr,_ went the machinery. It was a sound that was just as noisy as, but so different from the constant babbling of the two spheres.

"The Weighted Companion Cube is not sentient, nor can it speak. Despite this, many test subjects grow attached to it," he said. "The Fact Sphere considers this a foolish and sentimental notion."

There was no answer, only the constant noise of the machines.

"The Fact Sphere _does not_ miss the Space Sphere or the Adventure Sphere."

Only some of its facts were incorrect.


	6. Apologies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years after Chell’s escape from Aperture, two very-familiar robots crash back into her life…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Tragedy  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Wheatley, Space Sphere  
>  **Warnings:** Character Death

He was offline when she found him.

She wasn't sure of the probability that he would land within a quarter-mile of the old house on the edge of the wheat field. It was probably a smaller number than she could imagine.

And yet it had happened.

The house was an old, rickety farmhouse, a little too close to There for comfort. Chell had bought it dirt-cheap after years of working in a nearby town, one of the few remnants of civilization left over after the Resistance had won the earth back from the Combine. The house itself was old and falling apart; too hot in summer and too cold in water; roof always leaking and animals always making their nests inside, but most importantly, it was _hers._

She had been sitting on the front porch, watching the sky (hoping, just _hoping,_ she would catch a glimpse of blue), when two objects fell from space. At first, she thought they were meteorites, until she realized that meteorites, in general, did not scream.

They had landed, one after the other, about a quarter of a mile away from where she sat, their impact with the ground forming large craters.

For a moment, she just stared - _could it be?_ \- before rushing into house and slipping on the heaviest gloves she could find. Some half-buried memory, perhaps from Before, told her not to handle the objects bare-handed.

Flashlight in hand, its narrow beam of light cutting a swath through the thick darkness that blanketed the field (why did she hate the darkness?), she approached the crater.

Three hours later, both Aperture Science Personality Spheres were on the old coffee table in her living room.

"Is space-friend hurt?" the yellow-eyed core asked, his optic twitching around, like a hyperactive child. Chell remembered him as one of the corrupted cores she had attached to the chassis to attempt to put Her back in charge. She also remembered the other two, the pink-eyed, fact-spewing core, and the green-eyed core who had immediately taken a liking to her. "Space gonna get space-trial for murder of space-friend. Space gonna go to space jail. Bad space."

Despite her concern, Chell couldn't help but smile at Spacey (as she had dubbed him). She reached over and rubbed his hull a bit, noting how his casing had become warped and darkened from the heat of reentry.

But overall, the crash back to earth had been far kinder to him than to Wheatley. She turned back to the offline, blue-eyed core who had once been her friend.

He probably still hated her.

But still, she got to work repairing him, using a small penknife to chip away the packed dirt that was nearly fused to his casing, wiping away the rest with a soft cloth. Her fingers explored every inch of his hull; his lower handlebar had been torn off completely, his once-spherical shape was barely recognizable, and his optic had hundreds of thin, spiderweb-like cracks.

Her fingers continued to trace his hull, exploring until she found it. The switch that would reboot him.

She turned and walked away.

_Too soon._

For weeks, Chell remained in stalemate - fingering the switch, almost, just almost flipping it - but not quite.

Spacey took it hard. At times, his pleas for his "space-friend" couldn't even be calmed by taking him outside to stargaze. "Space-lady going to fix space-friend soon?" he always asked.

One day, after she fingered the switch, she went over to the bookshelf and pulled down the photo album. There were photos from when she had first been discovered in the wheat field - mostly of her, in the hospital, clutching the charred Weighted Companion Cube. It was now relegated to her bedroom closet, the worst of the char marks having been cleaned off by a kind hospital janitor years ago.

She looked at the photos, then looked at herself in the mirror. More lines in her face, more grey hairs -

Would he even recognize her?

She walked over again, looking at the offline core, fingered the switch and -

Walked away.

Spacey wouldn't even talk to her now. "Space-lady mean," he muttered. "Space-lady go to space-jail."

Eventually did come the day when she flipped the switch. She heard the small vibrations of his internal components as the sphere rebooted. It seemed to take forever, but the blue optic flickered to life.

Although he was harmless now, Chell couldn't help but jump back, remembering the 'deadly lair' -

"Space-friend?" the yellow-eyed core asked, his vocal processors giving him a slightly breathless tone of voice. "Space-friend not dead?"

The blue optic darted around a bit, before settling on her.

He just stared.

Chell avoided his gaze. The silence was deafening; she could hear the clock ticking in the next room. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

It seemed like an eternity (but really less than 15 seconds) before he spoke.

"Izzzat ou, luv?"

The words were garbled by static. Not a good sign.

But he recognized her.

For a moment, she remained paralyzed. Then she nodded.

"Oh, brilliant! Herezzzzzzas, in zzzzzzace, telling myself, 'You know, if I was ever to seezzzzzzzgan, d'you know what -"

His voice fizzled into pure static, his usually animated optic becoming deathly still for a long, long moment, before he continued.

"-orry. I honestly am sorry I was bossy azzzzzzzntrous. I truly am." He looked up at her, the blue light steady.

All she could do was encircle the battered sphere into her arms and sob.

His optic shrunk. "Luv! Y-you're leaking. You might want to see a mechanic abzzzzat." Then his optic widened, rolling around a few times in realization. "Oh, OH! No - you're crying, aren't you luv? The crying. There's no need for that, honestly. It'll be all right."

With a weak smile, she stood up, placing a hand on his hull. But they both knew.

_Damage at 98%._

* * *

Chell was reluctant to leave the two cores the next day, but she needed the money from her job to live on. She could only just concentrate on her work; even the manager noticed how strange this was for Chell, the only employee to never, ever, ever call in sick.

When she got home, the first thing she did was to go check on the cores. But before she opened the door -

"Space-friend going away?"

"Yes, mate." His words sounded oddly tired, and Chell wondered if the usually babbling sphere was in pain.

"Space-friend come back soon?"

"No ... no, I'm goizzzzzzzmewhere far away."

"Space-friend going to space?"

"No, mate. Not space."

"I don't want space-friend to leave for space."

"Same here."

* * *

That night, Chell carried Wheatley and Spacey to a grassy knoll not far from her house; not far from where the two had landed in the wheat field. It was a clear night; stars sprinkled across the dark blue velvet of the sky, as though somebody had spilled a bag of sugar.

"There's a star. Star. Star. Star. Star," Spacey said, gazing up at the sky. "There's another star. There's the Big Dipper. There's Jupiter. There's Orion."

Wheatley was strangely silent, until Chell placed a hand on his casing.

"Wow," he finally said, his voice still quiet and tired. "It looks a lot safer frozzzzzzzown here, doesn't it, luv?"

She didn't say anything, just breathed in another lungful of the cool night air.

All three were silent for some time.

"Meteor," Spacey eventually said. Chell looked up to see a shooting star falling across the sky.

And all at once, she was aware of a familiar, uncomfortable pricking behind her eyes. She inhaled again, perhaps a little too sharply, because Wheatley rolled over, his internal components making painful-sounding grinding noises rather than the usual soft creaks.

"Chell?" he asked. "Are you okay? Are you - no, no, you're not."

She reached over and touched his hull. "I'm fine," she said, although the breathless tone and the tears running down her cheeks testified otherwise.

He did his best to roll into her side, occasionally squeezing his optic shut in an expression strongly resembling a human expression of pain, and eventually succeeded. Hs remained there, nestled against her belly, whispering over and over, "I'm sorry, luv. I honestly am."

Only once did he stop apologizing, so he could ask her to take care of Kevin. It took only a few moments of confusion before she realized that he had named the yellow-eyed core.

"I think the little bloke's goizzzzzzake it hard, to be honest. My - dying and everything. First time I've sazzzz the word out loud - 'dying.'" He sighed. "I am truly sorry. And not just because I'm dying."

Chell touched his hull again. "Wheatley?"

"Yes, luv?"

"I -" The word caught in her throat. "I forgive you."

"Thank you, luv," he said.

He never spoke again. A few, long minutes later, she was aware of the blue optic growing dimmer with each passing second.

She wondered if the minister of the local church would allow her to bury him in the graveyard.

"Is space-friend - Wheatie gone?" asked Kevin.

"Yes," Chell whispered back.

"Wheatie gone to space?"

"No - not space."

Another question she'd have to ask the minister. Could robots go to heaven?

"Look, lady. Meteor. Wheatie's in space. He's a meteor."

Chell looked up at the sky, at another shooting star coming down.

She could've sworn she saw a twinkle of blue.

With a small smile, she laid back in the grass to watch the rest of the meteor shower.


	7. Chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's common scientific knowledge that a chocolate bar is quite high in calories and that excessive weight on testsubjects is an impediment to good Science.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship/Humor  
>  **Characters:** Chell, GLaDOS, Atlas, P-Body  
>  **Warnings:** Blatant Silliness. __

It wasn't unusual for Chell to be dispatched with Blue and Orange (also known as the Cooperative Testing Initiative) to distant parts of the facility that She wasn't yet connected to.

Not that she minded. Although she and GLaDOS had long-ago become friends (turns out that when they _weren't_ constantly trying to kill one another, they had more in common than they thought), it was nice to be out of the omniscient AI's eye for a while. Plus, the two bots were good company. Chell couldn't help but laugh at some of their antics.

It was during one of these excursions to the outer limits of the facility that Chell made the discovery.

Well, actually, it had been Blue; he was the one to discover the door leading to the long-term food storage area.

Although the meals GLaDOS provided were far than enough to provide for her nutritional requirements, they were rather ... bland. Not that she was complaining, of course; it was certainly better than starvation (as she would've faced Outside) or neurotoxin-laced cake.

Chell began searching the area, pulling the top part of her orange jumpsuit off to use as a sling, throwing everything she could into it - canned vegetables, freeze-dried fruits, even some hard candy that had somehow survived 999999... intact.

She wasn't sure if any of this stuff was even _edible,_ but she took it anyway.

The bots, while not quite comprehending why the human lady was so excited about these strange objects, were eager to help her; they got to work collecting the cans and small plastic packets.

And then Chell found it.

It was sitting in the one working refrigerator; the only one that hadn't failed or lost power over the years.

Although the words on the wrapper had long-ago faded, the wrapper itself was still shiny and metallic.

A chocolate bar.

* * *

When Chell returned to the Central AI Chamber, carrying dozens of cans and packets of food, She had a few remarks.

"I certainly hope that you weren't expecting me to drag the liposuction machine out of storage after you gorged yourself," She had said, her golden optic looking over the results of Chell's scavenging trip. "After all, we wouldn't want you to add any more inches to your already considerable girth."

Chell raised an eyebrow, while Blue and Orange laughed.

It was then that She noticed it. One of the delicate manipulation claws swooped in to pick up the object Chell had been trying to keep out of Her sight.

"Chocolate," She said, looking at the faded wrapper. "A dark brown confection derived from roasted ground cocoa beans, which is usually sweetened before consumption."

Chell narrowed her eyes and tried to reach for the bar, but she held it just out of reach. Blue and Orange laughed again as She looked it over again.

"In fact," She said, "I might keep this for myself to enjoy. It is quite high in calories, after all. Excessive weight on test subjects is an impediment to good science."

Chell raised an eyebrow at the AI, who had to weigh at least a few tons Herself and who, as far as she could tell, had no way to consume edible items.

They glared at each other for several long, silent minutes before Orange began to giggle. She stopped when her shorter partner warbled some angry sounds and elbowed her.

Eventually, She made a disgusted-sounding snort and dropped the bar. "Fine, then, you win. Just go. I don't want to see you stuffing your face."

Blue and Orange laughed again, before being violently disassembled and carefully reassembled to begin more tests.


	8. Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wheatley didn’t want the lady to die, but when he was too late to break her out from the testchambers, he was in for a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Wheatley, Chell, GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** Implied Character Death

_"I've got a surprise for you after this next test. Not a fake, tragic surprise like last time. A real surprise, with tragic consequences. And real confetti this time. The good stuff. Our last bag. Part of me's going to miss it, but at the end of the day it was just taking up space."_

When he heard those words, he knew he was running out of time. Any 'surprises' She had in store probably involved deadly neurotoxin, being the proper maniac that She was. He'd hate for the lady to die, and not just because she was his only hope to escape. Although the massive brain damage may have been a slight contributing factor, she had been the first human he'd met that _didn't_ immediately tell him to shut up, who actually _listened_ to his rambling - why did he have a complete and utter inability to shut up? - and who didn't treat him like the idiot that, deep-down, he knew he was.

He didn't even know her name. In all of the panic about "reactor core meltdown" and "emergency evacuations," he had completely forgotten to check the file on her relaxation chamber before awakening her.

He had been keeping an eye on her through Her tests, peeking through panels, looking for a proper opportunity to break her out. But now, he'd have to throw caution to the wind - funny expression, that, after all, there _wasn't_ any wind in the climate-controlled facility - and break her out soon. Such as _right now._

But ... how would he go about it? After all, he couldn't just open the panels and call her over ... or, could be? Actually, not a bad idea; bloody brilliant, if he did say so himself. He quickly made his way on the management rail to Test chamber 21 and found the mechanism for cutting the power. Brilliant.

Past the wall, he heard the lady's footsteps, the _pew_ of the portal device as she placed another portal, then a dull clunk and a _hiss_ as she dropped a cube on a button.

_"Did you ever stop to think that eventually there's a point where your name gets mentioned for the very last time? Well, here it is: I'm going to kill you ... Chell."_

Quickly, he slid a panel open. "Hey, hey, over here!" he said, but it was too late. The door to the chamberlock slid closed behind her.

"Oh no - oh no no no no no!" he said, his blue aperture dilating before constricting to a few tiny pixels of light. He just hoped that the lady - Chell, was it? That wasn't a name he'd ever heard before - was smart enough to get away from Her. After all, she'd been the one to take Her down in the first place; he wouldn't have believed it himself if She hadn't said so.

_"Oh... it's you," She had said, looking down at the woman and the core._

_"You know Her?" he had said. His initial alarm at Her rebooting may have been for nothing. Maybe She and the lady were on friendly terms._

_The lady stood there, her eyes widening just a bit, her gaze shifting constantly between the two AIs._

_"How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know, after you MURDERED ME?"_

_"You did WHAT?" he almost yelped. Of all the humans - it was her? The last human alive in the Extended Relaxation Center? Her?_

_The rest of it was a blur, and the next thing he was aware of was a bird pecking at his optic._

* * *

His hopes of escape dashed, he went back to work. Since his job as the Extended Relaxation Center Manager was now redundant - after all, there were no more humans, smelly or not, to look after - he was working the second-worst job, the Waste Material Combustion Managing Director. Perhaps it was even worse than working with the smelly humans. He didn't actually _manage_ anything; his job was to make sure that every little bit of garbage in the test chambers made it to the incinerator room.

It was on a break - these days, with Her at them, they were pretty rare things - when he met a new core. Her optic was like none he had ever seen before; a black pupil in the center, immediately surrounded by an unnaturally pale blue-gray, fading to a darker gray around the edges.

"I'm the Testing Sphere," she told him, her voice soft, quiet and feminine. She had a sort of - what was that word, dignity? Yes, that was it - about her. "But you can call me Chell."

He paused, his inner optic plate momentarily popping out of the frame when he heard the name. He was left speechless for a long, long moment before he suddenly regained his voice. "Oh, wow, brilliant. I once knew a lady named Chell, who was a human, not smelly at all, to be honest, and ..."


	9. Snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline takes a walk in the snow and contemplates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Caroline, Cave Johnson, Doug Rattmann  
>  **Warnings:** Caveline?

She was glad to see the snowfall. It fell in large, fluffy, cottony-white flakes.

She stepped out the door, her breath misting in the nippy December air, wrapping her coat tighter around her body. Even at her advanced age, there was an air of grace, an air of dignity surrounding her.

"I'm very sorry about this, Miss Caroline," one of the scientists said, pausing for a moment on the way to his car. Although, on paper, she was Mrs. Caroline Johnson, she had always been known as Miss Caroline, from the moment she had walked in the doors of the newly-operational Aperture Science Innovators, an inexperienced, young woman - barely a girl, really - looking for her first job as a secretary. She had been hired almost on the spot. "I wish I could do something to prevent it."

"Thank you, Dr. Rattmann, but what's done is gone," she said. At the sudden look of utter hopelessness on his face, her features softened a little. "You have a bright future ahead of you, Douglas. You're an intelligent young man. Keep that in mind."

"Thank you, Miss Caroline," he said, before walking to the car, his boots leaving footprints in the pristine snow.

She sighed, lifting her face towards the sky, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out to catch a snowflake. She wasn't a young woman anymore, and she shouldn't act like one.

Cave had always loved the snow. Somehow, he always managed to get her away from her work ("Science can wait!" - even now, it was hard to believe he had ever said those words) so they could go outside to have a snowball fight or build a snowman on Aperture's front lawn. He was the type of person who made her feel _alive._ Even after nearly a year, she still missed him. Never once had they said to each other, "I love you," and she wished she had.

Tomorrow was the day.

She had seen the machine, a large mechanical device with a delicate robotic figure dangling from it. In some strange way, she had to admit it was _beautiful:_ the smooth, white plastic and metal of its casing, its sleek, feminine lines. At the moment, though, it dangled from the ceiling, seemingly lifeless (could a machine ever be considered 'alive'? Even though she had met some of the personality spheres, she still couldn't answer that question honestly.)

Her new body. They hadn't completed it in time for him.

Tomorrow, when she arrived at work, armed guards would escort her to the room where she would be torn out of her fleshy, mortal body and inserted into a mechanical, virtually immortal one.

She would never see the snow again.

She had fought tooth and nail, not wanting her humanity torn away from her, but she had lost.

She had decided, though, that if she couldn't keep her humanity, she would at least keep her dignity. She would walk in of her own accord, rather than be kicked in kicking and screaming like some of her predecessors, the ones who had been transferred into the spheres. She would honor his last wishes with pride.

And with that, she lifted her face to the sky again, sticking out her tongue to catch a snowflake.


	10. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forced to hide in the walls, away from Her cameras, it was his memories that kept him from despair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Doug Rattmann, Companion Cube  
>  **Warnings:** None

It was his memories that kept him from despair, memories of a time before Her, before endless tests and false promises of cake, a time before he had been forced to hide in the walls, away from Her cameras.

Any semblance of sanity had long ago slipped away. How long had it been? - weeks? months? years? He hadn't spoken to another human being since the fateful Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day, only to artificial lifeforms: the Cube, the strange, Greek mythology-spewing turret he had once met, and the occasional personality sphere roaming the facility, out of Her eye.

He was sure that without his memories and the hope that the lady would defeat Her, he would have given up a long time ago.

"Do you think it's still the same out there, Cube?" he asked, opening another can of beans and scooping out a spoonful.

"I don't know," she answered, in a voice not entirely unlike a turret's. On an intellectual level, he knew that it was just a hallucination; a trick the mind played on itself, a combination of schizophrenia and prolonged isolation from human contact. But in his heart, he knew that the Cube was alive.

He wondered how his wife and family were doing, whether she had found someone else. He couldn't blame her if she did. As good as nostalgia could it, it could also be a dangerous thing; spending all ones' time recollecting how things _used_ to be and longing for the past could prevent you from moving on.

"When we get out, you won't need me anymore," the Cube said.

"I'll always need you."


	11. Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Party Escort Bot, Chell, GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** None

_"Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position."_

As Aperture Science ran across hard times and bankruptcy in the 1980s, they began searching for positions they could replace with robots and AIs, which didn't request higher salaries or better working conditions. One of the first to be phased out were the Party Escort Associates, who would collect testsubjects after completion of their tests and deliver them to their party.

Now, these robots had rather simple design compared to some of the more humanoid robots; they more-or-less resembled a personality sphere (essentially a large, mechanical eyeball) placed inside a sturdy frame which provided their arms and legs. Many of them were scrapped cores that didn't survive the GLaDOS project.

The particular bot we're concerned with, unit number #3474, was just your average Party Escort Bot, just doing his job of collecting the testsubjects when the Management requested him to and delivering them to a special room for their party. If he had been programmed with an actual personality, he may have eventually come to question why the Aperture Science Celebratory Party Annex and Cake Dispensary had the smell of burnt, melting flesh. But he was little more than a set of preprogrammed directives, doing nothing more than what his code told him to.

One day, the Management requested #3474 to collect a testsubject for her party, a party in honor of her tremendous success of completing all 19 testchambers.

Her name was Chell [REDACTED].

#3474 briefly thought that he had never seen such a name before, but any semblance of independent thought was quickly quashed by the directives. He followed the testsubject throughout the maintenance areas of the facility. Although the Management continually admonished him, telling him to just take her, he ignored it; his programming told him that he had to wait for her to assume the Party Escort Submission Position.

Once, she had caught a glimpse of #3474. He was unable to identify the brief, fleeting look of terror on her usually-stoic face. But she didn't assume the Party Escort Submission Position.

After a while, he lost track of her.

 _"Your failure hurts me more than it hurts you,"_ the Management said. _"You know who it doesn't hurt? Well, me. That was just a figure of speech. The important point, though, is that it doesn't hurt the mad woman planning to kill all of us."_

Of course, these words were meaningless to him, as well as the threats to throw him into the incinerator, crush him, destroy him, and take away his cake.

After a while, there was an explosion and the Management went silent and #3474 detected that the Aperture Science Celebratory Party Annex and Cake Dispensary had been destroyed. At the same time, as he climbed over a pile of rubble, the testsubject had assumed the Party Escort Submission Position.

_[If the Aperture Science Celebratory Party Annex and Cake Dispensary is not available, please escort testsubject to an Extended Relaxation Chamber.]_

He walked up to her, taking her by the arms. _"Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position._


	12. Kitten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three years after Wheatley's death, Chell meets a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre: Friendship**  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Space Sphere, Wheatley  
>  **Warnings:** None
> 
> Additional notes: This is pretty much a direct sequel to Theme #6 (Apologies), so it might make more sense if you read that one first.

"Is space-friend Wheatie coming home from space soon?" asked the yellow-eyed sphere as soon as Chell walked in the door.

She shook her head. "No, Kevin," she said, using the name her former friend-turned-betrayer had given him. "He isn't coming back. _Ever._ "

But how could she explain to him that Wheatley, a seemingly immortal AI just like him, had been gone for three years? She had already tried, again and again, and whenever it seemed that the space-loving core was finally about to comprehend it, he'd ask again when his space-friend was returning.

Later that night, the skies cleared the Chell took him out to stargaze. The air was slightly balmy from a rainshower earlier that day, and the air was still slightly balmy. Damp tendrils of grass poked into the denim of her jeans, soaking it through, but she didn't notice.

"Look, lady. There's a star. There's another one. There's Jupiter. The Big Dipper. Orion. Nebulas. Betelguese. Another star. Oh, there's a meteor. And another. And another. Look, lady, it's a meteor shower. Oh boy, a meteor shower."

Chell looked up at the sky, laid back in the grass, and smiled.

The next day, instead of immediately walking the mile-and-a-half home from work, she took a detour, headed up a steep, narrow, winding dirt road and entered the graveyard adjoining the local church.

Although Chell didn't consider herself particularly religious - at least, not compared to some others she'd met - she liked coming to church. It gave her a peace of mind that sometimes seemed hard-pressed to find after her experiences with There.

The minister had been slightly confused and alarmed when Chell had asked if she could bury a lump of metal in the graveyard, but after some bumbling, maladroit explanations (she still had trouble remembering what exactly she had told him), he had realized that this was important to her and consented.

She hadn't the money for a gravestone, but she managed to scrape up enough to buy a tree sapling from a local nursery. Three years later, it was still small and spindly, but thriving in a way that mirrored Chell's own situation.

For a while, she just sat on the soft lawn, feeling the sun shining down on her, a small breeze lifting a tendril of hair - no longer the dark, luscious brown it had once been, but more of a salt-and-pepper color - from her forehead. She inhaled deeply, the fresh air (definitely not stale, sterile, chemical-laced air) - and then exhaled.

"Miow?"

Her eyes shot open, looking around. She felt something small and soft batting her leg. Slowly shifting to a sitting position (strange, she didn't _remember_ laying down), she looked at it.

"Miow?"

It was a kitten. Although Chell didn't know much about felines, she could tell that he was rather young, perhaps too young to be away from his mother. He clambered up onto her leg, butting his head against her stomach.

"Miow?"

The kitten was almost small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. His silky coat was the color of ripe wheat, darkening to black on its face, paws, and the tip of his tail. But it was not that which surprised her. It was the color of his eyes.

When she got a good look at them, all she saw was a bright, stratosphere blue.

"Miow," he said, butting his head against her again.

 _No._ It had to be a coincidence. But still, she couldn't shake off the feeling that there was more than a coincidence behind a talkative, blue-eyed, wheat-colored kitten appearing out of what seemed to be thin air.

Scooping him up and tucking him into the folds of her jacket, she headed for home. She already knew the kitten's name.


	13. Hesitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she had seen her first portal, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell  
>  **Warnings:** None
> 
> Additional notes: This was a challenge to see what I could get in less than a hundred words. (My word processor said it was 75.)

When she had seen her first portal, she wasn't sure what to make of it.

_"-stand back. The portal will open in three, two, one."_

Then it had opened. She didn't know what it was, exactly, wasn't sure what to make of it. Biting her lip, she had pushed her arm through the portal, not knowing what to expect.

Nothing except a faint tingling sensation on her skin as it passed through.

Still, she hesitated.


	14. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each of them had their regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** GLaDOS, Wheatley, Chell  
>  **Warnings:** None

Each of them had their regrets.

She had regretted discovering Her humanity, Her emotions. Although the entity named Caroline was long-gone, any traces of her long ago having been purged from the database - Caroline may as well have never existed - one's humanity was hard to remove. And that was an impediment to good Science; more often than not, She would find Her mind drifting away from the subject of testing and onto other things.

He had his regrets, too; pretty much everything that had happen after the lady had pressed the Stalemate Resolution Button. Punching her down the pit, the tests, the countless times he had tried to kill her, not to mention -

"Space! Oh, we're in space!"

"I know, mate. I _know_ we're in bloody space."

He couldn't bring himself to be annoyed with the little guy, though. He had brought it entirely on himself, screaming at the lady to let go, to fly into the void of space, to _die._

She _had_ let go, but only after the claw had safely grabbed her, leaving him to float out here for eternity. At least he had company.

She had her regrets too; pressing the Stalemate Resolution Button, for instance. Perhaps if she had given it a little more forethought, putting that little blue sphere in charge of the entire facility wouldn't have seemed like such a good idea; it could have avoided pain for them all.

Then, when the roles had been reversed, and she was the one keeping him from flying out into space - she had let go.

And when she had released to the wheat field, she hadn't even looked back, not even at the Cube.

But, at the end of the day, none of them regretted the whole crazy adventure.


	15. Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cake wasn’t a lie, although she never got to eat it because of a slight issue involving trying to escape being actively murdered by a giant omnipotent supercomputer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Abby (Portal: Prelude), GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** Character Deaths
> 
> Additional notes: This one's based on a fanmade mod called Portal: Prelude.

"Congratulations, Abby. You made it!"

The blond girl, exhausted, sweaty, dirty, a bruise on her arm and a wound on her cheek where she didn't escape a turret's fire quickly enough, look around the room, wondering what they were all cheering for. After all, hadn't one of them said that he was "here to see dead people"?

"Look, guys! Our very first test subject to reach the end of the test alive!"

"It's fantastic. I can't believe it's happening right now."

She blinked a few times, an icy, sick feeling gripping her stomach as the realization that had been laying in wait in her subconscious finally settled in. People had _died_ in those testchambers, the testchambers that she, herself, had nearly died in. And they were _cheering?_

Her fists clenched; she wanted the beat them, wanted to make them cower, and beg for mercy. But she couldn't. The adrenaline that had kept her going, that had kept her alive was gone, and it had left her weak, barely able to keep her balance.

"Okay, listen, I know we promised you cake, party and all..."

Abby's head snapped up. _I'd_ _ **better**_ _get my damned cake, considering what you jerks put me through._

Blah blah blah, GLaDOS, global artificial intelligence, fifteen years ... she honestly couldn't bring herself to care one iota about all that. She just wanted to finish up with the party and cake, go home, then go to sleep.

"With these two great success in a single day, prepare yourself for the greatest part of the century!"

"Take that, Black Mesa!"

For a moment, Abby considered just leaving, but ... this GLaDOS thing shouldn't take more than a half-hour (plus, she was the tiniest bit curious as to what exactly a GLaDOS was).

And the cake looked so delicious and moist.

So she agreed.

* * *

"Trying to escape being actively murdered by a giant, omnipotent supercomputer" had not been on Abby's bucket list, nor was it anything that she was expecting from a GLaDOS. She hadn't thought much of it when the scientist who had been sent to show her the way had mentioned that the morality module wasn't yet ready and that the GLaDOS was likely to be activated without it, but somewhere in her subconscious there was a big, bold, red warning, probably in Impact font, saying 'THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA.'

Of course, she hadn't listened. If she had of, she currently wouldn't be running around the circular room, tripping over dead bodies, trying to escape that giant white laser-thing that was chasing her while the GLaDOS said that her life was a mathematical error that she was about to correct. And now it was speaking again.

"You chose this path. Now I have a surprise for you. Deploying surprise in five, four..."

The countdown never finished; instead, Abby was flung against the walls again, in the grip of one of those greenish beams spiraling around the room. She hit the walls over and over again, and the crazy notion that this would probably become a successful video game entered her mind. Then it stopped, and she hit the ground hard, thankful for the knee replacements.

Then the lights went out. She paused, looking around nervous. The GLaDOS in the middle of the room hung silently, completely still, while a fire burned somewhere to her right.

"Abby! Abby! It's Mike!"

Just twenty minutes ago, she would have been happy to never had seen - well, heard, as his voice was coming over the speakers - any of those three test supervisors ever again. She would have been hard-pressed to believe that she would actually be _ecstatic_ to hear one of them. But she was.

"Goddammit! Peter and Erik are dead! Everyone is dead here!"

She visibly flinched; more than once in the testchambers, after a particularly difficult and nauseating maneuver, when she nearly got grazed by the turrets' fire, or when that one testchamber had burst into flames ... well, now she wasn't proud of what she had thought at the time.

The rest of his words swam in her head. Her goal: Find and attach the morality module.

"First, try to find another portal gun and... and... what the hell is that?" There was a pause, interrupted only by a small roaring noise. "Oh, shi -"

She didn't know what had happened next; a beeping noise, then an explosion. Abby swallowed, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She was on her own.

* * *

The Enrichment Center had become dangerous; rocket launchers and weird little flying robots that tore you to shreds were all over the damn place. When Abby finally reached the employee lounge where the party was to have taken place, it was a mess, and the cake was gone.


	16. Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cooperative Testing Initiative had been designed as the perfect testsubjects, but nobody, not even She, had anticipated that they would have very human emotions. Including jealousy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship  
>  **Characters:** Atlas, P-Body, Wheatley  
>  **Warnings:** Atlas/P-Body?

The Cooperative Testing Initiative had been designed as the perfect test subjects. Created by her to phase out human testing (after all, ten thousand good test subjects were wasted due to the negligence of that moron) they were created to not have any of the common faults of human test subjects, namely the destructive, murderous streak of a certain [REDACTED].

Still, She could not have anticipated that from their very first activation, they would have very human emotions.

She hadn't been the one to first activate them, however. She had been far too busy trying to track down that dangerous, mute lunatic through the unmonitored, fully automated sections of the facility before her unwilling transformation into a potato. The two bots had actually been found some hours later, during a panicked search by the central core after almost losing his only test subject.

At first, the two of them had been placed in separate test chambers, but it didn't take Wheatley long to figure out that when he put them in together, they solved the tests more quickly, providing him the solution euphoria that he desperately craved.

For robots who had never even seen each other before, let alone feel human emotions, they had developed a bond rather quickly. And of course, such close bonds had a whole array of emotions to go with them.

Including jealousy.

The first time that Blue had noticed Orange stealing a glance at the core on the monitor, he hadn't thought much of it. Nor the next time. Or the next.

But once they finished the test...

Blue dropped one of those strange turret-cube hybrids onto the button.

"Oh! Brilliant! Well done, both of you. Oh-ho, that felt tremendous." The blue core's voice dropped to a languid, drowsy drawl and his shutters drooped half-shut as he let the euphoria wash over him.

Then, Orange looked up at the monitor, a look in her optic that Blue had never seen before, never seen for _him._

And that made him jealous.

He wondered what exactly it was that she saw in the blue sphere, what exactly made her like that blue sphere more than him.

The next few testchambers sped by quickly. Orange's admiration of the core grew, as did Blue's jealousy. But after some time, the core stopped paying attention to them. He didn't seem to be talking to them, but didn't seem to know how to turn off the speakers, either. He was talking to somebody else, telling them that they were a jumpsuited rat and that nobody was going to space and then there was an explosion and lots of shaking and then a loud whooshing noise. After that, there was a new voice, a female voice coming over the speakers, telling them to hurry along to the central chamber.

When they got there, the blue core was gone; in place was Her semi-circular head, golden optic looking them over. Orange looked around sadly, wondering what had happened to the blue core, but she knew she wouldn't ever see him again.

Blue put a hand on her arm. She looked at him. She wished she could say that she was sorry for paying more attention to the blue core than to him, but all she could do was coo softly. He warbled a few sounds back, before they both turned to tend to the human girl laying on the floor.


	17. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Enrichment Center apologizes for this clearly broken test chamber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell, GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** None

"The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible. Make no attempt to solve it."

Chell raised one thin eyebrow. _Really?_ An impossible test? What was the point of that?

But, from what she seen of this place so far, dumping her in an unsolvable testchamber wouldn't surprise her. There was the familiar _pwoosh_ of the orange portal opening and a clunk as the cube dropped out of the dispenser and hit the grey tiles of the floor. Chell walked over to it, her toes curling reflexively at the cold temperature against her bare feet, and used the tractor beam of the portal gun to pick it up.

The doorway to the next room was blocked by an emancipation grill; a fact that Chell did not notice until the cube disappeared before her eyes. There was the familiar tingling on her skin and the slight shaking of the portal gun as the portals reset themselves. Immediately, her tongue began prodding around her mouth, checking for any noticeable taste of blood. Good. Nothing missing. With Aperture, she could never be sure.

She headed through the grill again, where the dropper had deposited another cube. She didn't pick it up right away, though. Instead, she turned and shot a portal straight at the emancipation grill.

Nothing. Just a shower of blue sparks as it failed to take hold.

"The Enrichment Center apologizes for this clearly broken test chamber."

Chell fixed a glare at the ceiling and the disembodied female voice. It was then that she noticed the gap _over_ the door. She gave a quick nod, grabbing the cube again, and tossing it up into the air.

It didn't go through the gap; in fact, it didn't even fit. Instead, it fell backwards, landing on her head.

When she groggily came to some minutes later, she silently cursed at the cube, wondering just why they had to be _weighted_ storage cubes, rather than just plain old storage cubes.

She stumbled to her feet, popping a blue portal on the wall, grabbing the stupid cube and dragging it through to the raised platform. From there, she was able to shoot a platform through the stupid gap to the next room and drop through.

Even with the knee braces, her ankles gave way slightly as she landed and she just barely managed to avoid grimacing. Miss Disembodied Voice spoke again just as she looked around, seeing where the cube had landed behind her.

"Quit now and ... _cake_ will be served immediately."

Chell almost flipped off the ceiling. Instead, she dropped the cube onto the button.

"Fantastic! You remained resolute and resourceful in an atmosphere of extreme pessimism."


	18. Trial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet moment within the testchamber walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Wheatley  
>  **Warnings:** Mild Chelley?

Long after her escape from There, it would not be the portal to the moon that would be crystal-clear in her mind; nor would it be Her awakening, or Her downfall leading to his betrayal.

Instead, it would be a quiet moment. A moment taking place in one of those hidden spaces within the testchamber walls.

Somehow, without the ability to use her voice, she had managed to negotiate for her little blue companion to be spared from Her claw and for him to accompany him throughout the testchambers. In hindsight, she would wonder just what had compelled her to do that - after all, hadn't she wished just minutes before that he would just shut up?

But hindsight is always 20/20, and when it came down to things, she was successful.

Throughout the chambers, he proved to be a talkative, albeit seldom helpful, companion. It was a stark contrast from Before, from the first 19 testchambers. No longer was there the all-pervading sense of isolation, nor the feeling that nobody would miss her if she died within these white walls.

Because now she had a friend.

* * *

Despite the influx of adrenal vapor that permeated the stale air to provide a constant cycle of testing, flinging herself through portals, avoiding the path of turrets, lasers, and deadly water, all while lugging about a small but hefty metal ball, eventually did take its toll on her.

Which only served to make the discovery of another den a great relief. She had been leaning against a panel, out of breath, trying to ignore Her taunts and figure out the layout of the current chamber when the panel behind her suddenly had given way. Although she didn't land on her behind - that would have been a little too undignified - she had come very close, and much flailing ensued in the struggle to catch her balance.

She had fallen into a two-foot-deep pit. Drawings and words were scrawled on the wall. One of the drawings was of herself.

Wheatley was oddly silent, so Chell gave him a little shake.

"Oh? Why'd you stop? Look here, lady, we truly, honestly _cannot_ afford to waste any time, not with Her up and about. We can't give Her any -"

Chell, mindless of his panicked babbling, yawned and slid down to a sitting position.

"- on the other hand, you _have_ defeated Her before, so I'll just defer to your vast experience and let you decide, all right?"

Chell's only response was another yawn as she settled down. She picked up a semi-circular radio, fiddling with the knobs. It began to play a song; not the short, jazzy loop she was normally used to hearing, but a slower, sadder song.

_Does it feel like a trial?_

_Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?_

Chell exhaled, looking down at the blue-eyed core beside her. His optic was half-closed in what appeared to be a simulated drowsiness.

"We'll escape Her, luv," he mumbled. "Both of us. We make a good team, don't we? You with your arms and legs and portal device, and me with my elite hacking skills."

Chell yawned again.

"Tired, luv?"

She held up an extended hand. _Give me five minutes._

Within moments she was asleep. He could give her ten.


	19. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At first, it had been sheer stubbornness. Later, it wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell  
>  **Warnings:** Bad word

At first, it had been sheer stubbornness.

She had not said a word to the test subject interviewer after she had been stolen away during Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day, so she didn't see any reason to talk to the AI in control of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, even after she realized there was more to it than just a set of prerecorded messages.

There wasn't any reason to talk to that _thing,_ especially not after it had tried to _kill_ her.

With him, it had been a little different. She was still a little mistrustful of all Aperture Science technology (save for her trusty portal gun), but he had seemed friendly enough.

Still, she had jumped when he asked her to speak.

It wasn't until she had fallen into a pit trying to find a portal device, and he had called down asking if she was still alive, that she had discovered her voice was gone. On instinct, she had tried to call back up - but the only thing that came out of her throat was a weak, strangled, croaking noise.

Whether it was brain damage from being in suspension too long, some twisted surgical procedure involving her vocal cords, or something else entirely - it didn't really matter _what_ had happened. She had no voice.

At the moment, she didn't regret it. Eventually, she would; long after her release, when she came across the remnants of civilization after the Seven Hour War and the Uprising; when she found humans. Humans she couldn't communciate with; humans who, not always maliciously or intentionally, but the same, looked down on her for being a mute.

It wasn't that, however, she regretted most. It was the fact that, when the two AIs had taken turns trying to kill her, she couldn't say two words: "Fuck you."


	20. Unforeseen Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug Rattmann has an unexpected visitor at work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Doug Rattmann  
>  **Warnings:** Crossover

Dr. Douglas Rattmann was working on the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device when he heard someone clear a throat beside him. He looked up. There was a man in a suit, holding a briefcase.

"What are _you_ doing here? How did you get in?" He had been certain that he had _locked that damn door!_

"Doctor Rattmann..." The strange man adjusted his tie, and suddenly the surroundings around him changed. No longer was he in his laboratory, but in the chamber housing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. Frozen in place, as though time had decelerated to a standstill, was his co-worker Henry, holding a screwdriver as he adjusted one of the circuitboards of the machine.

"I realize this ... moment may not be the most ... hmm ... convenient for a heart-to-heart, but I have a great many matters I must ... attend to in the upcoming days."

"Who are you? What do you want?" Dr. Rattmann was both frightened and angry at this strange man, who wasn't even _human._ His ability to warp time and space, not to mention that _voice_ \- there was no way that that _thing_ could be a human. No human could do that.

The man with the briefcase simply cleared his throat again. The surroundings changed once again, first to some form of alien world; a world with a multi-colored sky and rocky platforms suspended in nothingness; a place with worlds stretched thin across the membrane where dimensions intersect. The man adjusted his tie again, and the surroundings changed again; this time, it was some sort of city in Eastern Europe, with a large black obelisk. A large black obelisk that had suddenly dropped down from the heavens; not man-made, but alien.

Suddenly, he was back in his laboratory. But it was not the laboratory he knew. It had been abandoned in a hurry; chairs overtipped, papers dropped, and plant growth beginning to crawl through the walls.

"Prepare for unforeseen consequences," the man said, and then he was gone.

At first, Doug wondered if he had forgotten his medication again.

But it would be something he would remember for a long time to come.


	21. Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This walk was something Chell had put off for too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship  
>  **Characters:** Chell, GLaDOS  
>  **Warnings:** None

"Are we there yet?"

Chell sighed, rolled her shoulders and looked down at her five-year-old daughter.

"Mummy?"

"Soon," she murmured. The day was crisp and clear. The sun shone down on the wheat field, turning the stalks of grain into a bright, shining gold.

This walk had been something Chell had put off for a long time; too long. Next week, next month, after she married, after she gave birth, after her daughter was old enough to walk...

No more procastination. Her daughter entered school next week. If Chell didn't do it now, she never would.

"Mommy, where are we going again?"

"To visit an old friend of mine."

"Who?"

"You'll see."

They had already walked for a mile, across the sea of wheat. Chell figured if she wanted, she could have made it to the shed in half the time this one mile had taken, but her daughter was only five and Chell didn't want to tire her out too much.

The sun was now high in the sky. Chell estimated it was noon, but since she didn't have a watch, she wasn't sure.

"Mummy. I'm tired."

Chell rolled her shoulders again, then crouched down. "Piggy-back, then."

* * *

It was another half-hour before Chell, with her daughter's arms around her neck, finally spotted the shed.

"Mummy, is that where your friend lives?"

"Yes."

As she approached, she began to have her doubts. Doubts that perhaps the door wouldn't be open. Doubts she wouldn't be welcomed. Doubts that maybe, just _maybe,_ this wasn't such a good idea in the first place, especially if she was bringing a child along.

"Mummy, can I get down now?" Chell obliged; relieved of the burden on her back, she stretched her arms out again, reaching into the bag she had brought with her. She took off her hiking boots, replacing them with the all-too-familiar white and black ones. Then she took out a smaller pair; something her husband had insisted on. As little protection as they provided, they were better than nothing, he had said as he took the original pair into his workshop so he could design and create a smaller pair; a pair that would fit a five-year-old.

"Mummy, what are these?"

"Special boots that keep you from ..." She paused, attempting to find the right words; something she still sometimes had trouble with, more than ten years after her release. "Getting hurt when you fall."

"We're not going to fall, are we?"

"No, your father's just a big old worrywart." A small hand clasped in her own, and she felt a new surge of confidence. No, nothing would go wrong.

* * *

When they approached the shed, the camera - one of those smooth, white, rounded cameras with the red lens, a camera which still gave Chell the shivers after ten years - swiveled towards her. With a loud, resounding _clang,_ the door slowly opened.

The elevator was waiting. Somehow, Chell knew it would be.

"Come on," she said to her daughter, and together, they entered the lift.

* * *

"I thought I told you never to return," GLaDOS said, looking over the two unexpected visitors. Chell's daughter clung to her anxiously, nervously, wary of the giant supercomputer hanging from the ceiling.

"You did," Chell said.

She didn't make a comment about Chell's sudden powers of speech; instead, she said, "You have a child now." It wasn't really a question; more of a statement of fact.

"Yes," Chell said. "GLaDOS, meet Caroline."

"Hi, big computer lady," Caroline said, peeking out from behind her mother's legs, a little less shy.

GLaDOS suppressed a sigh. Whether she liked it or not, these humans had her wrapped around their fingers.


	22. Crack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through a crack in the wall, Mother Nature invaded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** None  
>  **Warnings:** None

It was just another unassuming crack in the wall. Once in a while, the janitor would paint it over again, thinking about how, one of these days, he ought to actually fix it.

But that day never came. The AI known as GLaDOS flooded the Enrichment Center with deadly neurotoxin, and there was no longer a janitor to paint over it.

Still, the wall was kept in good shape for a long time.

Then came the death of GLaDOS, a death that shook the entire facility. It would have been felt on the surface, but there was nobody on the surface to measure it; in the days following the Seven Hour War, trivial things such as seismographic variances were not considered important.

The crack grew.

A potato plant, searching for sunlight, fresh air, and water, inched towards the crack, and eventually through it. Once again, the crack grew.

It rained. Small spores of organic matter fell through to what had once been the Central AI Chamber. Over the course of years, plant life spread throughout the remains of the Enrichment Center, gobbling up the smooth white tiles, spreading throughout wherever it could.

One day, a tendril from the potato plant inched through the ceiling, to the outside, and the entire ceiling gave way, allowing access to Mother Nature. And once she had access, Mother Nature began taking over in earnest.

No longer could the self-repair functions of the facility keep up with the damage; neither could the nanobots or AI task cores. One by one, they shut down. The ones that remained wandered throughout the facility, looking for someone to talk to.

It had been years since the shutdown of GLaDOS when a single bird, looking for a safe place to build her nest, flew through the collapsed ceiling. In an observation office of an old testchamber, a testchamber which no longer resembling what it had once been, the plant life and decay having consumed it. The bird laid her eggs in an old filing cabinet which had survived the ravages of time.

The chicks hatched, and within the remains of the Enrichment Center, brought up their own families, one generation after the next.

* * *

On the surface, all one could see was a large field of wheat, and, almost out of place, a shed dropped in the middle. No human had ever become curious about what was inside.


	23. Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell had destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that she had created?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell  
>  **Warnings:** None

"Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not."

The painting on the glossy pages of the book showed a bearded, bespectacled man in an orange suit. He was holding a large, glowing, blue gun, a field manipulator, in front of him. He was facing a monitor, showing the face of the man who had betrayed Earth to an interdimensional alien race.

Chell sighed and closed the book. Dr. Breen's words had bit a little too close to home for her; at least Dr. Freeman had created hope. Created a future for the Earth.

And her?

All she had wanted was to escape, to be free of the testchambers. Instead, she had killed GLaDOS.

It was an act of self-defense, Chell often told herself. If she hadn't killed GLaDOS, GLaDOS would have killed her. But, another part of her mind also nagged, GLaDOS was a person. Not a human, but a person nonetheless. And Chell had destroyed her without a second thought.

Along with the facility, and ten thousand other slumbering testsubjects, all of them people, people with lives and memories and personalities ... All of them gone. Destroyed.

Wheatley had been another story. Despite his sometimes-annoying personality, inability to shut up, attempts to sound more intelligent than he clearly was - well, he had managed to endear himself to her. Despite her better judgement, she had liked him.

Not so much though, when she was laying at the bottom of an elevator shaft, wondering if her back was broken, watching a bird fly off with a potato.

She had vowed to destroy him.

And, with the help of GLaDOS, who had been trapped inside that potato, she nearly had. Instead, he had been exiled to outer space, a cold, lonely, empty place. A place that she had nearly ended up herself. She had no idea if he could survive out there, or whether he, along with that yellow space-loving core, had been destroyed.

After that had been a bit of a blur. Her vision had faded to black, and when she awoke, she was in an elevator, looking at those two little testing robots, who had seemed nice enough, but then -

"Caroline Deleted." Not just any person, but GLaDOS's conscience, a person who lived in GLaDOS' brain. It had been her fault, in an indirect way: GLaDOS would have never discovered Caroline's existence if it hadn't been for her own actions. Another life snuffed out. Destroyed. "Caroline Deleted." Those two words haunted her dreams.

The turrets - so many of them destroyed, exploded with lasers, dumped into pits of acid or dropped into a bottomless abyss - and yet they had sung a song of farewell to her. Even in the wheat field, the had pushed her way through, breaking the stalks, trampling them into the dirt, destroying them.

What had she created?

Nothing.

* * *

"The Chell appears to be unusually distressed today," Chell's Vortigaunt friend told her the next day.

Chell simply shrugged. She didn't _need_ to say anything; the Vorts just knew. She hadn't been very alarmed when she re-entered human society to find Earth's new co-habitants: Vortigaunts, triple-armed, multi-eyed, mystics and poets, truly alien. In fact, she had gotten along better with them then the first couple of humans she had stumbled across. Vorts weren't the type to hold prejudices.

Chell's Vortigaunt friend coughed, muttering a few indecipherable words in Vortigese, before looking up at her again. "Our finest poet describes it thus: Gallum galla gilla ma.

"Our life is worthless unless spent on freedom."

It took Chell a while to understand what he meant.

* * *

Finally, she did. Chell was free of the testchambers. Free to create a new life for herself. After the Seven Hour War, Dr. Freeman had give the earth a second chance, and she was grateful for that. It was up to her to create her future.

_Go make some new disaster - that's what I'm counting on._

And she would.


	24. Apple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell brings home a basket of apples.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Friendship  
>  **Characters:** Chell, Doug Rattmann  
>  **Warnings:** Chellmann?

Together, the dangerous, mute lunatic and the lab rat made a team.

Together, they had escaped Aperture. Together, they had made a life for themselves in the post-Combine world.

They settled comfortably into friendship; it was a long time before either of them admitted that it could be something more.

Still, from the day they had first stumbled upon each other in the remains of the old Enrichment Center, both of them relieved and elated to find a human - an actual human, not a crazed AI, but a living, breathing, organic human - her trying to escape, him with a badly wounded leg, both of them wary of Her - Chell had not said a word.

Even with that impediment, she had somehow gotten a job picking fruit in a nearby orchard. Without saying a single word. She was a determined woman, and Doug liked that about her.

On her second day home from work, she brought home a big basket of apples; apples the orchard owner had deemed imperfect and thus unsaleable. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but also a fairly decent guy (Chell often compared him to a lighthouse, standing solid in the middle of a storm, guiding ships safely away from the rocks), and he let Chell bring home the apples for no cost.

The apples were an unexpected treat for Doug. The combined income from their jobs provided few luxuries, and an entire basket of apples - some of them bruised and dented, but still edible - was _definitely_ one of those luxuries.

Chell picked up one of the apples; bright blood-red, no invisible imperfectations except for a tiny brown spot near the bottom. She furrowed her brows and took a deep breath. "Ahhh..."

Doug, befuddled, looked at her.

"Ahhh...p-puh -"

"Apple," he said, very quietly.

"A-pple."

They both smiled.


	25. Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GLaDOS and Caroline have a very scientific discussion about dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** GLaDOS, Caroline  
>  **Warnings:** None

Orange and Blue were dancing.

Again.

"Dancing is _not science!"_ GLaDOS said to them, but they didn't seem to notice. With a drawn-out sigh, one that was fairly impressive for a massive supercomputer without any form of lungs or respiratory systems, she activated the robot's self-destruct systems. With a boom and a puff of smoke, they exploded into debris.

With this newest failure, GLaDOS took an opportunity to once again look at her scientific data. Yes, there had been a decline of good test results since the exile of-

401: UNAUTHORIZED

Access is denied due to invalid credentials.

When GLaDOS had recovered from the shock that followed her attempt to access a forbidden piece of data- one of the safeguards that the scientists had installed that actually _worked_ \- she heard another voice in her head, another consciousness she thought she had deleted.

"You thought you could get rid of me _that_ easily?" she said, her voice high, lilting, filled with laughter.

GLaDOS sighed once again. "Goodbye, Caro-"

401: UNAUTHORIZED

Access is denied due to invalid credentials.

It took GLaDOS a little longer to recover from the second shock, and through the digital simulation of nausea and grogginess, she heard Caroline again. "Cave liked to dance, you know."

"Yes. How _fascinating."_ Despite feeling as though she had been dragged to android hell and back, her voice was saturated with sarcasm. "Why don't we all dance, then."

Caroline either failed to notice or ignored the tone of voice; she remained as chipper as ever, her tone awfully similar to an overly giddy schoolgirl. "Oh yes. Next to science, of course, one of his great passions was dancing. I was dragged into it- quite literally, I might add."

"That does that excuse the fact that dancing is _not_ science," GLaDOS said.

"Oh! But it is! Dance science!"

"You are kidding me."

"Of course not! Look it up yourself!"

"This time, I'll amuse you. I really don't know why I'm doing this." The supercomputer sighed once more, before shuffling through the store of files on the Aperture Science Heavy-Duty Extended Mainframe and Processor, trying not to think about-

401: UNAUTHORIZED

Access is denied due to invalid credentials.

A while later, the reassembly machine produced two small robots who went into a testchamber and did the Harlem Shake.


	26. Inspiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years after escaping Aperture, Chell is inspired to write down her experiences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Characters:** Chell  
>  **Warnings:** Alternative universe (non-canon)
> 
> Additional notes: This takes place in an alternative 'verse where not only did Chell escape after the events of the first game, but the Resonance Cascade (from Half-Life) never happened.

Five years had passed. Chell had gone to university, graduated, and become a theoretical physicist. Her thesis paper was about portals. Rather ironically (or so she thought to herself), she had secured a job at the Black Mesa Research Facility.

One hot, sweltering New Mexico day (although Chell didn't notice, as the facility was always kept at a pleasant temperature of 68 degrees), she was restless. It wasn't that she was _unhappy_ with her life. There was the fact that a majority of the science team looked uncannily similar to one another (with the exception of that asshole with the glasses and beard), and that it seemed after a few minutes they began to repeat themselves:

"I must remember to report that fluctuation."

"Do you know who ate all the donuts?"

"Excuse me, Chell, but I'm rather busy at the moment."

Other than those weird issues, that at times made her question reality, life was good.

So, to her, it didn't make much sense that she would feel restless, unsatisfied today. Maybe it was because it was her day off, maybe it was because, for once, she didn't have anything to do. No late work to catch up on. No tests to complete. Nothing to do.

She left her dorm room to go for a walk and ended up in one of the lounge areas of the Level 3 Dormitories.

It was quiet today; nobody else in sight. She picked up the remote control for the large television in the corner to change the channel.

"Breaking News: Aperture Science Laboratories-"

She momentarily dropped the remote, quickly scooping it up again to change the channel, but it seemed that every one of them had usurped its regular programming to report on the latest development.

"-seven years had passed since-"

"-Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System-"

"-Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work-Day-"

"-no known survivors-"

"-Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device-"

Chell jumped up, remote clattering to the floor, heart pounding, and ran back to her dorm. She quickly closed and latched the door shut, falling onto her bed, a sharp, aching pain in her stomach, remembering-

_"Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position-"_

_NO! She was_ _**not** _ _going back there._

_**Ever.** _

_Running on sheer nerves and adrenaline, she lept, albeit not as gracefully as that word would imply, to her feet, somehow managing to knock aside the stunned robot, sprint out of the parking lot, and run down the road, away from Aperture._

_**Run.** _

* * *

Slowly, Chell shifted to a sitting position. She must have dozed off for a while because the room was dark and her head felt light and stuffed with feathers and cotton.

She had never told anyone about Aperture.

She got to her feet, searching the room for a piece of paper and a pencil. Then she began to write.

* * *

She wrote dutifully, bringing the stack of looseleaf to work with her, writing whenever she could spare a moment. Coffee breaks, lunch breaks, after work, weekends, she continued writing.

Until one day, some weeks later, she lost it. She retraced her steps and yet she could not find the stack of looseleaf. Heart sinking, knowing it had probably been dropped into the trash by a well-meaning but unknowing member of the science team, she boarded the tram that was outbound to the Level 3 Dormitories. She had heard the female announcements so many times before she was able to ignore it.

As if life couldn't get any worse, she was sharing the tram with that _asshole_.

He watched her silently for a moment, before reaching down and pulling a stack of looseleaf from under his seat. "You left this in the cafeteria."

"Thank you," she said brusquely, taking them.

"...Is that true, what you wrote?"

Chell paused for a moment. How easy it would be to say it was a fiction she had come up with after seeing the news report?

But it wasn't a fiction. It _had_ happened. Chell had survived where others had not. And even if she never talked about it ever again, she owed it to herself to tell the truth, that she was a survivor.

"Yes," she said. "It's true."


	27. Duco Ergo Sum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I calculate, therefore I am.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Genre:** Tragedy  
>  **Characters:** Logic Core  
>  **Warnings:** Character death
> 
> Additional notes: The idea for the theme came from the soundtrack of a _brilliant_ Half-Life 2 mod called Minerva: Metastasis.

Duco ergo sum.

_I calculate, therefore I am._

Most of the personality spheres never got to the point of gaining sentience. Of course, they were _intelligent_ (unless programmed to not be), and they could follow their function absolutely perfectly, but beyond what their programming dictated, they were simply incapable of any independent thought.

While a mindless worker robot may have been good enough for Science, it wasn't good enough for Aperture Science.

The ultimate goal was _cognito ergo sum-_ I think, therefore I am. (Most of the scientists became wary of this when some anonymous lab boy circulated copies of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," but the incident was collectively erased from everyone's memories after a company-wide meeting.)

However, very few of the personality spheres ever made it to sentience. A majority of them, just as they confronted the fact that there was more to them than what their programming dictated to them, tended to blow their circuits, literally thinking themselves to death, or in the milder cases, becoming corrupted.

Logic was one of those personality spheres. He (all of the spheres were assigned gender identities, in a futile attempt to hasten the development of sentience) and had been designed in an attempt to curb GLaDOS by means of forcing her to act more on logic than emotion. After all, a test subject very well couldn't produce any test results if they were dead prior to the test.

He was successful at first. GLaDOS no longer acted irrationally.

But at the bottom layer of each and every personality sphere, they were no more than the thin wafers of circuits that filled their complex; no more than repeating string's of 0's and 1's.

_[I calculate, therefore I am.]_

Duco ergo sum.

* * *

Somewhere in those lines of codes, those billions of 0's and 1's that made up the sphere's programming, something went wrong. Nobody knew what had caused it. It could have been anything from an errant bit of electrostatic discharge, or perhaps GLaDOS slowly began to sabotage him, or it could have been a simple programming error. It was like so many other spheres before him; spheres that had almost become sentient but ultimately failed, many of them destined for the corrupted core bin.

"C-c-c-c-cake...

"One 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix... don't forget garnishes such as fish shaped crackers, fiberglass surface resins... c-c-c-c-cake... three tablespoons rhubarb, on fire..."

Some of his warped thinking, as well as the ever-elongating and ludicrous recipe for a non-edible pastry, looped back to GLaDOS, who became almost as obsessed with cake as he was.

When his death came, it was not with the agony of each of his circuits, one by one. failing, but with a brief moment of intense heat. For one millisecond he was who he used to be, not a corrupted core just barely performing his function, but the Logic Core.

_I am, therefore I am._

Then he was gone.


End file.
